security
I stumbled across an interesting article outlining how to beat the MSDN visual CAPTCHA algorithm with some .NET code. Unfortunately, the author (a Microsoft MVP) demonstrated his “crack” by testing it on the blogs of other MVPs: (if you were one of the 94 people i comment spammed) sorry about
opera
Wondering which browser is fastest? These guys ran browser speed tests across an impressive array of operating systems. The hardware used is mildly obsolete by today’s standards – an 800mhz P3 with 256mb of RAM – but there’s no reason to think the benchmark results wouldn’t scale to faster
regular expressions
We’re currently supporting a third party application that, in addition to producing some truly impressive WTFs, generates incredibly verbose log files with zillions of ‘error messages’ that aren’t really errors. This makes diagnosing problems in their server code* very difficult. It is, however, a great use for a
keyboard shortcuts
Like Scott Hanselman, I view the mouse as an optional computer accessory.* Manly coders love the smell of compilation in the morning and we know that speed = keyboard. A mouse? C’mon. That’s so teenage girls can pick emoticons in AOL Instant Messenger. And for flash “developers.” Us tough
asp.net
I had a request for an ASP.NET version of my windows forms About Box. This is a good idea that I’ve considered in the past, so I took the time to convert it today: Clicking details will provide a dump of all loaded assemblies in summary form, with
microsoft
I’m working with Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2004 again. Since the last time I discussed VPC, Microsoft released the essential Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1, which addresses a lot of outstanding issues, particularly compatibility with SP2 and newer AMD/Intel processors. If you start delving into VPC, I
software development
I’ve always discouraged ivory tower development – teams where developers are cloistered away for years in their high towers, working on technical software wizardry. These developers have no idea how users will respond to their software they’re creating. They probably couldn’t even tell you the last time they
programming languages
On Bruce Eckel’s Static vs. Dynamic [typing]: Despite this, I’ve had some leanings back in the direction of static type checking. As you point out, the goal is to create solid components – the question is how to accomplish that? In a dynamic language you have the flexibility to
asp.net
Nothing beats a well constructed FAQ based on lots of real-world questions. It’s a little old, but I was surprised how much genuinely insightful material is present in the Wintellect ASP.NET FAQ. It’s a mixture of the mundane (How do I comment out statements in ASPX
software development concepts
In Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef, Joel derides the least common denominator effect of formal methodologies: Mystery: why is it that some of the biggest IT consulting companies in the world do the worst work? 1. Some things need talent to do really well. 2. It’s hard to
vb.net
Inspired by Jeff Key’s, “If loving Resharper is wrong I don’t wanna be right” soliloquy, I emailed JetBrains to see if they had plans to bring Resharper – currently a C# only tool – to VB.NET. This was their response: Of course there will be support for VB.NET,
.net framework
This one has me stumped. I’d swear this behaved differently prior to .NET 1.1 service pack 1 (and/or XP SP2), but I can’t prove it. As reported by a CodeProject reader, you’ll get the standard .NET crash dialog in a console app, even if you’